Month: June 2015

Ok, I forget the quote. But it went something like, "It's not what you do NEXT that's important. It's what you do LAST.”

Lots of ways to interpret this, but I hear it as: What are you going to leave people with when you exit the stage? What final contribution do you intend to make? What are people going to remember you for?

This applies to organizations as well as individuals. And of course to musical acts.

The Beatles' final recording was their Abbey Road album. (The acrimonious Let It Be sessions were released after Abbey Road, but they were recorded before.) The Fabs sensed their days were numbered so they decided to put their bickering aside and pull it together for a grand finale. Their farewell message was their last song on the LP in which they sang, “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Concluding their band career with their biggest-selling album, their most joyful recording, and some of their most uplifting lyrics was no small accomplishment. John Lennon had said years earlier that they would decide when to call it quits (and not the fickle public). They delivered on his promise. A textbook case of "going out on top.”

50 years ago this month a seismic shift occurred that altered the course of pop music history.

An unusual sounding single by a new LA band, The Byrds, commandeered the pop charts in June of 1965, elbowing out hits like "Help Me Rhonda," "Wooly Booly," and "I Can't Help Myself" for the top spot. The song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” was written by singer/songwriter Bob Dylan—already a folk music star but unknown to most pop music fans.

At the time, the surrealistic lyric of the song in combination with the jangly guitar sound of the band—highlighted by an electric 12-string—made it one of the most original sounding records EVER. By early summer the single had caught fire like few other recordings of the era, stayed on the Billboard charts for 13 weeks, and earned rave reviews from music critics—and even accolades from The Beatles, who 16 months earlier had rescued rock music from oblivion.

The song was a game-changer because it introduced to pop listeners a quality of lyrical poetry previously unheard on Top 40 radio, delivered with an alluring melody, celestial harmonies, a densely-arpeggiated electric guitar sound, and a solid back beat. To my mind, the triumph of this record marks the date that rock music grew up—after which the lyrics began to say something and the music gained the sophistication to powerfully communicate them.

A business lesson—and especially a life lesson—that I picked up from my rock & roll days is to maintain some skepticism towards leadership and authority. Especially when that authority appears to be unquestioned.

Bob Dylan said not to follow leaders. John Lennon said not to follow Dylan. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong said we’re not meant to follow anybody and that we should even “revolt against the honor to obey.” Strong stuff. It’s too bad this sentiment has been endlessly trivialized on bumper stickers and lapel pins, because deference to hierarchy, obeisance to authority, uncritical acceptance of orthodoxy (economic, scientific, religious, etc.), and lack of critical thinking in general are among the most dangerous habits on ample display these days.

The business world is hardly exempt from this. If you work for a company you may be led to believe in the infallibility of your company’s leaders—or in the unexamined goodness of your company’s business model, practices, culture, etc. (If you’re self-employed, you can substitute industry or field for company.) If you worked for a large investment bank in the middle of the last decade you probably believed in the bounteous benefits of financial “innovations” like unregulated credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and other derivatives.

Gotta share my latest excellent adventure: street singing! I had done a little “busking” in London and Liverpool a dozen years ago—and in Los Angeles decades before that—and have been meaning to get back to it ever since. So for the last two weekends I’ve begun working the sidewalks of Back Bay, Boston.

It’s amazing how little the street scene has changed over the years: once again I was getting drowned out by Hare Krishnas, hectored by incoherent drunks, and shut down by cops. Yet it was still tremendous fun. And almost profitable. (Hell, what I earn in tips from playing music is only two decimal points different from what I earn from consulting to business.) And very instructive. It's a great way to practice “customer intimacy,” as mentioned in a previous post.

Speaking of which, I’ve written about my complaints with my bank before. But the frontline folks there are so polite and helpful I WANT to like the company—and I’ve refrained from publicly excoriating it. (I will say it’s one of only two US banks that recently flunked a “stress test” to determine which banks can withstand a financial crisis.) Clearly this institution has its operational problems—e.g., its MasterCard ATM cards didn’t work a few weeks ago and the bank neglected to notify its customers (oops), making it a tad inconvenient for us who couldn’t pay our restaurant bills, parking fees, or cab fares. (Am I being picky here?)